CHAPTER IV. HOME LIFE. Thanksgiving Day was the great annual home festival in New England, when all the family would be gathered together, the boys returning from school and college. There was a large rock on the hill back of the house, where father and some of us would stand to catch the first sight of Whiteface and the chaise that brought them home. They would tramp the nine miles from Brunswick to the Kennebec which they crossed on the ferry, and I would often drive seven miles to meet them on this side. Few families enjoyed so much together as we did. I recall how bright and happy father and mother were, and how happy they made us feel. It was an uncommon faculty they possessed without much talk. I can hear my father's voice on Thanksgiving morning as he opened his large Bible saying, "We will read the one hundred and third Psalm this morning. How much we have to be thankful for!" He always read that Psalm himself. We always went to Church, sometimes in a sleigh in deep snow, and returned to feast and enjoy ourselves. The governor of the State used to appoint the day and I recall my father reading in Church the Thanksgiving proclamations of Governor Albion K. Parris, whose grandson is now a prominent banker and worker in the Church in Washington. I think that Lincoln was the first President who made it a national proclamation. Once it is said the Governor put off Thanksgiving Day because the ships with molasses were delayed and it was impossible to celebrate it properly without molasses for the pumpkin pies. We used candles for light and sperm oil occasionally. Matches were unknown until long after I was grown. The "Tinder Box was their precursor and was as indispensable as the tea-kettle that still sings on the stove. Unknown to this generation, the tinder box is worth describing. It was of varied forms and more or less coarsely ornamental. An oblong wooden box some six or eight inches long and three or four in width it was divided into two parts. In one was the tinder, half burned linen rag, in the other were kept the flint, steel and brimstone matches. The flint and steel being struck together, emitted sparks, which fell upon and ignited the tinder. The matches were thin slips of wood, dipped in melted brimstone, and they were lit from the tinder. Often the fire would be covered up carefully at night, and one neighbor would give coals to another to kindle his fire in the morning. Neighbor Gray's chimney was large enough to hold a bench and there we often sat together. I used to go there for fire when ours happened to go out and the tinder box was not in order. As to children's books, of which there is now such a deluge, we had only Miss Edgeworth's Tales, which linger still in my memory, Sandford and Merton, and the sempiternal Robinson Crusoe. When I was in London, fifty years afterwards, I sought out with interest, in Bunhill Fields, the tomb of Defoe, its author. We had few books, but those few were thoroughly conned-read and re-read, so that perhaps we suffered no loss from lack of children's literature. Periodicals were unknown, and the age of illustrated magazines was far in the future. A weekly quarto sheet, the Boston Messenger, was the means of our communication with the outer world. The London Christian Observer was republished in this country about that time. We had many traditions, and stories of the early days still were told around the winter fires. I remember seeing many of the Revolutionary soldiers, with their Queen Anne muskets, who talked of Burgoyne, but pronounced it Burgyne, and one told me of the burning of Charlestown by the British, after Bunker Hill, which he had witnessed. I used to hear my father and others sing hymns of the Revolution, and though they were not very poetical, and had much about bombs and wounds, yet I can imagine they were comforting to them in the perils of war. I can only recall a few lines: "War, I defy thee, Clad in smoky terrors, "Good is Jehovah In bestowing sunshine, 'Death will invade us By the means appointed, 28 WATTS' HYMNS. And we must all bow Before the King of Terrors. "Nor am I anxious, Nor am I anxious. If I be prepared, What shape he comes in." Watts was a favorite hymn-writer, and some of his hymns have been familiar to me for seventy-five years. My grandmother, who died suddenly, repeated the day before her death his striking Psalm 30: "Firm was my health, my day was bright, And I presum'd 'twould ne'er be night; Pleasure and peace shall ne'er depart." Those old hymns, like Watts, were the spiritual food of our ancestors. I hope some day to know good Dr. Watts. My father and brothers had good voices, and I often would lie on the floor and listen to them singing in the evening. I will name some of their favorites. Psalm 102, Watts: Psalm 146: Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray, And must thy children die so soon!" "I'll praise my Maker with my breath, Praise shall employ my nobler powers; My days of praise shall ne'er be past While life and thought and being last, Or immortality endures." When very young I once went with my father to the burial of a man, and I can remember my father standing in the doorway and repeating in his deep bass voice that solemn hymn, No. 88: "Life is the time to serve the Lord, The vilest sinner may return." It made a deep impression on me. My father repeated in his last moments Hymn 31, which his mother had taught him eighty years before : SUNDAY EVENINGS. "Why should we start, and fear to die, What tim'rous worms we mortals are! And yet we dread to enter there. "Jesus can make a dying bed Feel soft as downy pillows are ; And breathe my life out sweetly there." 29 I repeated this last verse to Miss Fish, in her sickness. She had had no religious training, and was much comforted by it and died a Christian. These and many other hymns have been much in my memory, and I read them over and over even now. My mother used to tell of a hymn, which sung to a fugue tune became ludicrous : "Ran down the beard, ran down, ran down the beard, the beard, to Aaron's feet." Sometimes it happened they sang on a hot day, "Oh for a cooling, oh for a cooling, oh for a cooling stream.” On Saturday and Sunday evenings we had much singing, and all the family save myself could sing well. The Sabbath was observed from sunset of Saturday to sunset of Sunday. We were not allowed to walk or whistle on Sunday. The present statute in Massachusetts which defines the Lord's Day as from midnight to midnight is as late as 1844. We never had any evening services, but even in towns there was but a short intermission between the morning and afternoon sermons. In the Memorial of Rev. Dr. Crocker, of our Church, Dr. Lippitt gives an account of the intense interest aroused by a Christmas-Eve night service held in Dr. Crocker's church in Providence, when I was a child. The streets leading to the church, some two hours before the service, were alive with people to witness the novel and strange sight of St. John's opened after night for Divine worship. The house was densely filled and packed, pews and aisles, and hundreds were turned away from gaining entrance even to the vestibule. His text was St. John iv., 10: "If thou knewest the gift of God," &c. Dr. Crocker's countenance and manner showed how solemnly he felt the responsibility of addressing them. The stillness of death pervaded the assembly during the delivery of the sermon, nearly an hour long. Many were convicted and converted by that sermon. Eternity alone will disclose the momentous results of that first night service in St. John's. Now an evening service and sermon are the rule 30 SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. everywhere, but there is great difficulty in securing the attendance of any great number of people who have been out in the morning. This difficulty is felt everywhere, in city and in country alike, in small and large churches, and many expedients have been devised for securing a better attendance. In the cities this might be secured by an exchange with a neighboring rector, who by arranging a series of sermons might, by the new voice and different treatment, arouse interest so as to induce the congregation to attend. Or it might be possible, through the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and making the pews free at the evening service, to secure a different congregation from that of the morning. As it is now, it seems to me that the Sunday with many Episcopalians, as with the Roman Catholics, is considered at an end after the morning service. This is cutting short the Lord's portion of time, and I fear its evil result upon Christian character. The extreme of the Puritan Sabbath is in danger of being replaced by the laxity of the Continental Sunday. We went to meeting morning and afternoon always, as did all respectable people, as we thought, and the congregation was as large in the afternoon as in the morning. If any one had been seen driving out of town on Sunday morning or afternoon, he would have lost standing in the community. Often the minister would continue his subject in the afternoon, with the same hearers. There were no Missionary Societies and not much interest in missions in my boyhood. The year I was born Messrs. Judson, Hall, Newell, Nott and Rice were ordained in Salem, Mass., for Missionary work in India, and soon set sail, the advance guard of a noble host. Sabbath-schools were then just becoming common, and I went very young and received a prize for learning the Sermon on the Mount. E. E. Hale says he was not allowed to enter Sundayschool until he was six years old, being turned away twice. I remember hearing a Temperance sermon, a rare thing at that time, and a sermon on the text "Come, ye children, hearken unto me" in which the preacher applied it to children. My Puritan home of eighty years ago had no stern or unfeeling parents, to inspire children with terror or cast gloom upon their young hearts, as has been sometimes represented. My father, though strict in discipline and having the nickname from his scholars of System, was cheerful and kindly. He might forget some things, but he never forgot the morning and evening family |